Manuscripts in the context of "Atharvaveda"

Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range in dates from the earliest writing in cuneiform, impressed on clay, for example, to multiple unpublished versions of a 21st-century author's work. Historically, scribes who were paid to copy documents may have been literate, but many were simply copyists, mimicking the shapes of letters without necessarily understanding what they meant. This means that unintentional alterations were common when copying manuscripts by hand. Intentional alterations may have been made as well, for example, the censoring of printed work for political, religious or cultural reasons. Additionally, interpolation, the insertion of new material into an existing text, can occur when scribes or editors added explanatory notes, corrections, or supplementary content that later became incorporated into the main text.

The objective of the textual critic's work is to provide a better understanding of the creation and historical transmission of the text and its variants. This understanding may lead to the production of a critical edition containing a scholarly curated text. If a scholar has several versions of a manuscript but no known original, then established methods of textual criticism can be used to seek to reconstruct the original text as closely as possible. The same methods can be used to reconstruct intermediate versions, or recensions, of a document's transcription history, depending on the number and quality of the text available.

Hindu texts or Hindu scriptures are manuscripts and voluminous historical literature which are related to any of the diverse traditions within Hinduism. Some of the major Hindu texts include the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Itihasa. Scholars hesitate in defining the term "Hindu scriptures" given the diverse nature of Hinduism, but many list the Agamas as Hindu scriptures, and Dominic Goodall includes Bhagavata Purana and Yajnavalkya Smriti in the list of Hindu scriptures as well.

An incunable or incunabulum (pl.: incunables or incunabula, respectively) is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. The specific date is essentially arbitrary, but the number of printed book editions exploded in the following century, so that all incunabula, produced before the printing press became widespread in Europe, are rare, where even some early 16th-century books are relatively common.

They are distinct from manuscripts, which are documents written by hand. Some authorities on the history of printing include block books from the same time period as incunabula, whereas others limit the term to works printed using movable type.

A scriptorium (/skrɪpˈtɔːriəm/ ) was a writing room in medieval European monasteries for the copying and illuminating of manuscripts by scribes.

The term has perhaps been over-used—only some monasteries had special rooms set aside for scribes. Often they worked in the monastery library or in their own rooms. Most medieval images of scribing show single figures in well-appointed studies, although these are generally author portraits of well-known authors or translators. Increasingly, lay scribes and illuminators from outside the monastery also assisted the clerical scribes. By the later Middle Ages secular manuscript workshops were common, and many monasteries bought more books than they produced themselves.

Islamic manuscripts had a variety of functions ranging from Qur'anic recitation to scientific notation. These manuscripts were produced in many different ways depending on their use and period. Parchment (vellum) was a common way to produce manuscripts. Manuscript creators eventually transitioned to using paper in later centuries with the diffusion of paper-making in the Islamic empire. When Muslims encountered paper in Central Asia, its use and production spread to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa during the 8th century.

The Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation has estimated that 3 million Islamic manuscripts have survived. Other academics talk of 7 million surviving manuscripts out of 90 million manuscripts written between the 7th and 14th centuries. The estimates vary due to several challenges, such as limited access to manuscripts located in conflict zones or held in private libraries.